Some good news to share for the free and open source Godot Engine, as the lead developer Juan Linietsky announced during GodotCon that Epic Games have approved them for an Epic MegaGrant.
This was announced during Linietsky's talk on porting Godot Engine over to the Vulkan API, which is coming with Godot Engine version 4.0 later this year. Epic Games have approved them for a sum of $250,000 USD which they've known for a little while, but they only just got the okay to announce it.
You can see the livestream below. As it's live, I can't seem to link to a time stamp.
Direct Link
According to Linietsky, they're speaking with "many" other companies that may be looking to fund them too. So Godot Engine is definitely moving forward in the minds of all kinds of developers. This is true outside of funding in terms of actual usage too, with Godot gaining popularity when looking at the Global Game Jam.
So the Godot Engine crew join other software like Lutris, Krita and Blender who also previously got an Epic MegaGrant as well as the games ASYLUM and Ira. Epic Games certainly are starting to spread their cash around open source a bit more lately so that's great.
Find out more about the free and open source Godot Engine on the official site. You can also find more info on Epic MegaGrants here.
Hat tip to marc.
Update: Godot's official announcement is now up.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Comandante Ñoñardo Feb 3, 2020
Kimyrielle Feb 3, 2020
appetrosyan Feb 3, 2020
Quoting: KimyrielleI said it before, but even when the money is coming from the next best thing to the devil, it's still money that will help Godot to become a better product, and they would be fools not to take it. If Godot will one day become good enough to bite into Unreal's market-share and cost Epic MORE money, that would be an added plus.
Uhm, the important thing is to not give Epic too much good publicity. Enough so that they keep spending money, but not too much so that people actually think that they're actually good.
Fuck you Tim. :)
Quoting: GuestThe comment section of this article is why the majority of game developers don't take linux gamers seriously and see them as whiny entitled losers.If you think this attitude is Linux-specific, you live in a bubble.
Edit: To be clear on my point, any time I see Epic mentioned on bigger Windows focused websites the comments are hilarious at times.
I fully agree that everyone should take it as it comes. Funding for a FOSS game engine is great. Take it. Use it.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 3 February 2020 at 5:18 pm UTC
Quoting: GuestThe comment section of this article is why the majority of game developers don't take linux gamers seriously and see them as whiny entitled losers.
You can't give credit where its due, you spread conspiracy theories to explain away any positive news. It is pissing me off now.
Some of us just can't be so naive about these moves...
Quoting: SslaxxExactly, they can't do much to harm Unity directly, it's too popular everywhere. So supporting competition in the indie market might benefit UE4. It's only relatively recently that UE4 has been adopted by indies but for years Unity was an obvious choice for any small company (and UE was for AAA games). Now Godot started to aggresively push Unity away having a lot of benefits and just a few downsides. Godot is easier to learn, it's completely free and open, its 2D engine is clearly superior (because it's specialized for 2D), it's small and pretty fast, and it keeps evolving quickly. The 3D part of the engine is not yet there (hope it will be in 4.0 with Vulkan) and there are much less samples, assets and info compared to Unity. But these points are so easier to fix than Unity's weaknesses.Quoting: EikeUnderstand that it's not really about benefiting Godot, but about harming Unity. Clearly they feel the risk that some users might use Godot over Unity (and not UE4 over Unity) is outweighed by the benefits.Quoting: rkfgGood publicity (they really need it), competition is good for everyone. To name a few.
I never heard the thoery that competition is good for one of the competitors.
Having a monopoly is good for a competitor (which then stops to be a competitior, of course.)
As Russians say, "money doesn't smell" i.e. it doesn't matter what the money source is, it's still the same money with the same face value. And unless Godot becomes, god forbid, an EGS exclusive I couldn't care less.
Quoting: 0aTTBut let's be honest: As soon as the Fortnite millions are missing, the EGS is overTencent is the only thing that makes me disagree. We could fit 100+ Valves inside Tencent's pockets. To put things in perspective, Valve has a total equity of ~2.5Bi, Tencent had
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valve_Corporation
Edit: Wikipedia was showing CN¥ for Tencent, not USD, thanks marcus for pointing that out
Last edited by dejaime on 3 February 2020 at 8:52 pm UTC
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